Karly's Wolf (Hollow Hills Book 1) (6 page)

It wasn’t until he felt the sudden constriction that he remembered Karly’s collar.

Crap.

He jerked up from four legs onto two and just as the final part of the shift rippled out through his paws, stretching them into useful hands once more, he grabbed for the collar and quickly took it off. Too late. Gabe was already laughing.

“Does she take you for your evening walk, too?” he asked as he opened the driver’s door and then stepped out of the way. “Down to the corner oak until you do your business and then back home again?”

Colton gave him a dirty look and threw the collar in the truck. Thank God for bachelors. His clothes were still wadded up behind the seat. He grabbed his pants. “I want you to run a trace on a phone number.”

Snorting, still amused, Gabe half-shrugged. “Sure.”

“How’s the wind blowing?”

“Pretty quiet, really.” He glanced back across the parking lot to watch three young women, talking and laughing as they made their way toward the snapping pennants. Pacing down the length of the truck, Gabe scented after them, but stopped at the tailgate. “Nice,” he commented, before giving himself a slight shake and coming back to Colton. “There’ve been a few fights, but nothing unexpected. Jax is here. Brought a whole posse of his boys down to get their Brides—eleven. Ha! Eleven! All in one year? Yeah, they’re definitely looking to break out from under Daddy Deacon’s restraining arm and expand into a territory of their own. Nobody likes the way they keep saying how ‘peaceful’ it is here.”

“Jax is barely weaned,” Colton grunted, jerking his pants up over his lean hips. “If he starts sniffing out of line, I’ll take him to the woodshed and he’s just smart enough to know it. I’m not worried about Jax.” His father, the Alpha Deacon, was something else entirely though. “What else?”

“Nothing much. Ben Fortimer threatened to plant a load of buckshot in little Jimmy Bingham’s tail if he comes sniffing around his daughter one more time. She entered herself in the Hunt, but I don’t think daddy’s quite ready to see his baby girl tackled to the forest floor. Pain in the ass stuff; nothing we can’t handle. Now, since I’m not going to be distracted from this, let’s talk about you some more.”

Buttoning and zipping up, Colton gave him a hard glare.

“Tell me,” Gabe said, cheerfully ignoring it. “What sort of fool collars a wolf?”

Off the top of his head, Colton was inclined to think one who didn’t know any better. He draped his shirt over his shoulder, but didn’t bother putting it on. Few of this year’s bachelor males had. When one only had four days to impress a wolf-shifting female into letting herself be caught without getting one’s face bitten off, one started by showing off his physique and it helped if it was exceptional. Colton was fortunate to be blessed in that regard.

“People are starting to say things,” Gabe offered, seeming so casual and yet definitely not.

Putting on his socks and boots, Colton frowned. “Like what?” He was pretty sure he already knew.

“Like who is that beat-up blonde and is the Hollow Hills’ Alpha really mating her or just being protective?”

Colton glared at him for almost a full minute before yanking his laces tight, grabbing the truck door and slamming it somewhat harder than was required. “Let’s go find our Brides,” he growled, and headed for the gaming ground.

CHAPTER SIX

There were potential Brides everywhere and they were, all of them, in his nose, and yet Colton knew it almost from the second that Karly stepped from her car onto Hollow Hills’ traditional Hunting grounds. Not only did every sentry chuff and rumble an under-breath alert to let everyone else know they’d been invaded, but the wind picked just that moment to kick up and shift and suddenly, her scent was all that he could smell. It stiffened him. In more ways than one, damn it. There were too many females here and every nerve in him was primed to take one—which only made Karly’s pleasing scent that much harder to resist. It was the impending Hunt. The wolf in him was right beneath the surface of his skin, begging to be loosed. Even knowing he shouldn’t, he still turned to follow that whisper-soft breath of Karly, his predator eyes hunting the crowd until he saw her walking with Mama Margo, there among the tents and vendors.

In the next instant, a football smacked into his chest and bounced right off him. The next thing Colton knew, fifteen shirtless males, all of them as driven to impress as he was, pile-slammed him to the ground.

Young Jax Deacon landed directly on top of him, pant-laughing at him. He was a kid, barely twenty and still with that wiry, puppy-lean physique that hadn’t yet filled out into manhood. Any other year, Colton would have let his wolf out. Any other year, it would have been expected. But then, any other year there wouldn’t have been a human wandering among the mating games.

Growling, Colton waited for the pile to gradually untangle itself and, when Jax seemed content to take his own, sweet time getting up, Colton “helped” the whelp. His shove almost threw the boy, but Jax landed with awkward grace on his feet and, as they stalked away from one another, grinned back at Colton.

The wolf in him—teased by scents of so many tantalizing females, the proximity of a good mating run, and the instinctive agitation amplified by so many trespassing males—leapt to answer that grin like the challenge it was surely meant to be. Colton barely kept his temper

“Hey!” Colton turned to see Gabe waiting for him near another shirtless male, an Omega named Marcus. Scarred and tattooed, he’d come to the Ridge dressed in biker leathers, on the back of a Harley and looking for a pack to join. Colton had no idea why he hadn’t approached a stronger Alpha like Deacon.

“Can you give me loyalty?” Colton had asked the first time he’d met him.

“Can you earn it?” had been Marcus’s reply.

Yeah, Colton had pretty much liked him right from the start. He didn’t trust him yet, but he liked him.

Shaking his head, Gabe spread his arms as if to say, ‘I tossed you the ball, man. What the hell?’

Snorting to clear Karly’s distracting scent out of his nose, Colton stalked through the grass to join them. He had to pay better attention than this or he wasn’t going to impress anyone, and he knew it. Dropping into a tackling position, he glared straight across fifteen or so feet of open grass and dirt to where his immediate opponent crouched in anticipation of meeting his charge.

To any outsider, this might look like a ragtag game of touch football, skins versus skins with no clear-cut team lines drawn, but it wasn’t. There were nine packs in the Hunt this year. Nine. If that wasn’t a record, Colton couldn’t remember any year that beat it. They might square off as if there were two opposing sides, but in this game, it was every male for himself, with pack brothers loosely joined together in an effort to monopolize the ball. It was all about proving oneself the fittest, the strongest, the most aggressive, dangerous. And virile. Females lined the ropes, watching, sometimes cheering, mostly just picking out who they might like to run for later on. As the hosting Alpha, Colton knew more than a few were looking at him, but as he settled into the next line-up and hunkered down into position behind the quarterback, his eyes searched for only one person: Karly. She hadn’t even noticed he was here yet.

“Hup!”

The ball shunted right. Only half the players chased it; the other half went straight for targeted competitors. Colton went straight for Jax. One of his pack brothers tried to run interference, but too late, Jax realized his intent and he took the young boy down. It was a hard landing, one made infinitely harder when Colton rolled to slam him facedown into the dirt and pin him there.

“Be careful,” he growled into the young whelp’s ear. He didn’t need to say anything more. Shoving back to his feet, he let the boy go.

Jax rose to his knees slowly, a scrape on his chin and blood pouring from his nose. Raw fury lit his eyes; they were so yellow, Colton barely suppressed his own inner wolf’s answering surge.

“Be very careful,” Colton warned again, and then he turned to walk away.

Gabe’s shout a half second later sounded tinny, like the echo of a cry at the very end of a long tunnel, and Colton didn’t need it to know he was being attacked. He felt it, that electrified prickle of all the tiny hairs rising on the back of his neck a half second before the hard pound of Jax’s feet charged the ground directly behind him. His instinctive response was all savage—a hard duck right, pivot and grab. Hands locked on Jax’s throat and then his groin. Colton heaved, flinging the reckless youth up into the air before slamming him down again, flat on his back in the grass and dirt, faster than the boy’s expression could even register the failure and then the subsequent pain.

Colton pinned him by his throat this time, pressing the force of his defeat and the pain into every inch of Jax’s wiry frame, looming so close over him that all Colton could see was his own reflection and the flicker of fear that flitted through the younger man’s eyes.

“When you find your balls,” he growled, “come and challenge me again. But next time, do it right. Come at my back again and, Deacon’s pup or not, I’ll kill you.”

In a move so slight, Colton doubted anyone else might even see it, Jax lifted his chin. A symbolic flash of throat, an act of placating submission that was neither honest nor reached as far as the younger
volka’s
eyes.

Colton stood up slowly, giving Jax plenty of time to decide if he wanted to lash out now or later. Jax didn’t move. He waited until Colton was far enough away before sitting up, then wiped his bloody nose on his arm.

Later it was.

Turning away, Colton stopped when he saw Karly and Mama Margo, standing side-by-side at the pennant-dotted rope that walled off the field. They were staring straight at him. Karly’s eyes were huge and she’d covered her mouth. Why couldn’t she have spotted him while he was strutting his stuff, running the ball down the field, naked from the waist up, a strong male in his absolute prime…no. She had to wait until he was beating up a stupid kid—
that
she saw.

Crap.

Mama Margo nodded once, approval shining in the depths of those calculating eyes; Karly, on the other hand, looked appalled.

She also looked really pretty. The wind was tugging at her hair. The sun had ignited all those golden strands, turning them into a soft halo of light all around her head and shoulders. The urge to go and talk to her was powerful, but right then, Gabe passed into Colton’s field of vision, with Marcus not far behind and watching closely.

Gabe threw his arms out, an exaggerated shrug coupled with a look that said plainly,
Seriously, what the hell are you doing?

Colton didn’t know anymore. He looked back at Karly, but her attention had been diverted. Sebastian McQueen was talking to her now, his posture looming and possessive. A shot of red burned straight up his spine and embedded itself under the back of Colton’s skull. For several long seconds, it turned everything he could see a dark and throbbing shade of rage. He gripped his fists so tightly his knuckles popped, and before he knew it, he was stalking toward them.

“Hey!” Gabe was already walking backwards to join the next line up, but his look said everything.

And he was right, Colton had to stop this. He had to get his mind on the game. He had to—

Karly reached out and let McQueen’s larger, more powerful hand engulf her own.

He had to kill that motherfucker right there where he stood.

Colton almost lost it. He nearly shifted. He nearly charged with all the force and aggression that could be packed into his powerful frame, straight for McQueen’s throat. He nearly did a lot of things, but in the end, he kept control. Colton snapped around to rejoin Gabe and Marcus in the next line-up.

“Who’s the woman?” Marcus asked. “And is she going to be a problem?”

“Get your nose off her before I slap it,” Colton said testily. He was angry and itching in his own skin—it felt so restricting.

Marcus pant-laughed, but when Colton hunkered down to square off against the opposing team, both Marcus and Gabe hunkered down at his flanks.

Colton tried to keep his burning eyes on his next opponent—a large male, shirtless, one of Jax’s lieutenants and old enough to want to play at being a man, though still too young to be any kind of threat in a real Hunt. Colton took his measure and then his attention was locked on McQueen once more.

He meant to play the game. He truly did, but there was a fizzling sensation trickling up his spine and into the back of his head, prickling like needles to get in under the haze of red creeping in around him. He’d never felt his rising wolf quite like this before; Colton struggled to swallow it back.

Karly’s hand was still in McQueen’s. She didn’t seem in that big of a hurry to retract it.

“Hup!”

The ball was spiked and two rows of aggressive wolf-shifters in full-on mate-mode surged toward one another. With his very first step, Colton felt the subdermal rip that tore him from the last vestiges of his shredded civility. The gloves came off; up until that moment, he hadn’t realized he’d been wearing any.

Jax’s lieutenant hit him like a brick wall, but Colton was older, bigger, and pissed off. One hard right hook knocked the youth flat on his back with a dislocated jaw and at least one less tooth. What was it about twenty-something pups that made them think they were wolf enough to compete with the big boys? When Colton had done the same some ten years ago, the lesson had cost him a savage mauling and a broken leg. Jax’s lieutenant only paid with a dislocated knee, a few facial injuries, and a breath-robbing body slam to the ground. He would not be running for a Bride this year, but at least he could count himself damned lucky there was a human on the field, otherwise Colton would have let his wolf out.

Of course, if not for Karly, Colton wouldn’t be the only wolf and this would have been a much more savage game. The shine of lupine eyes all over the field told of more than one
volka
on the brink of losing his restraint.

Leaving the whelp rolling on the ground, clutching his leg and grunting cries of pain, Colton headed back to wait for the next line-up and let Jax and his pack mates help their wounded brother to the sidelines. He couldn’t help himself, he glanced back over his shoulder. Sebastian McQueen had drawn Karly away from the game and, with Mama Margo quietly chaperoning in their shadow, he was leading her deeper into the crowd. Away from Colton.

Where anything could happen.

The whole field flashed an even darker shade of red. Colton didn’t realize he was growling until he began to catch looks from other males nearby. The level of aggression spiked all around him. Everywhere that he could see, yellow ferocity was igniting in the depths of warrior eyes. A wave of echoing growls rippled through the field as the wolf rose perilously close to the surface of those around him.

The next line-up began to organize. Colton hunkered into position, muscles tense—he should go after Karly, get her away from McQueen before the sonofabitch did something he’d have to kill him for. His
volka
rage was not yet so blinding that he failed to notice all of Jax’s remaining lieutenants lining up opposite of him. Seeking revenge for their fallen brother, their eyes were bright and some of them were snarling through bared teeth.

The aggression inside him grew cold and sprouted fangs.

Bring it.

Dual growls sounded from both sides of him as Gabe and Marcus both took up defensive positions at his flanks. Marcus flexed, ready and willing to take this hit for an Alpha he barely knew. Gabe, Colton knew, would probably chew his ears about this for days to come, but in this instance, they were at his side, offering pack strength and support.

“Hup!”

Colton was still a bulldozer, only now there were a hell of a lot more walls. They took his ass straight to the ground, and in the fury and pain that followed as teeth fastened onto his arm, and as fists and feet began to pummel his gut, the wolf in him broke free.

* * * * *

“Don’t be afraid,” McQueen said, showing her the gun.

“I’m not afraid.” But Karly was shaking so badly, she knew he had to know that was a lie.

Her next door neighbor, a man who looked every bit as hard and rough as the surrounding mountains, remained gentle and calm. He extended his hand, as steady as stone. “It’s not going to bite you. Here, take it.”